Pieces of the Sky
by SydnieWren
Summary: Itachi's sexual awakening, then and now. Kakashi/Yamato; Shisui/Itachi. Hard M.


**Hi all! Hope you're having a good spring so far. I have had this idea in my head for a while, and am glad to get it out. This concludes my series of Itachi-centric fics for the time being. I really hope you like it! As always, I really appreciate your comments, and I benefit a lot from them. Please let me know your thoughts!**

**Disclaimer: don't own.**

**Warnings: voyeurism, masturbation, anal.**

* * *

The day had begun glaringly hot and cloudless, but a little past noon the sky had grown grey and the air pregnant with the oppressively damp expectation of rain. Itachi could feel beads of moisture beneath his collar, and for a moment he was unsure of whether they were comprised of his own sweat or early drops of precipitation.

Kisame glanced over his broad black-cloaked shoulder as he paused at the mouth of a rope bridge.

"Look steady to you?"

Itachi arrived at his side and peered down into the steep ravine.

"Hardly."

It seemed to have grown from the fibers of the forest, its posts gnarled and knotted as tree trunks, and just as beset with creeping ferns and heavy moss.

"Well then," Kisame seemed to be meditating upon their options. A series of zigzagging ledges protruded slightly from the walls of the ravine, suggesting a footpath to the forest floor. But the earth seemed soft and loose, clinging to its formation by the grace of tree roots and banks of rock.

"Try it," Itachi supplied after a moment of observation.

"Aa."

As Kisame planted a hand on each frail post and moved into his first cautious step, the promised rain began to fall. Itachi tugged his sedge hat up by the thin strap formerly circling his neck.

"Just in time, eh?" Kisame muttered, grinning. He strode forward, pausing as the bridge sagged to center his weight. With his foot firmly planted on a stable plank, he took a second step, his open hands balanced over the threadbare rope railing.

A chorus of rain rose up from the forest as broad summer leaves reached out to capture their portion of the downpour. The heavy, earthy scent of fertile soil was gradually replaced by the clean smell of water, and in the distance, thunder echoed. Itachi waited for Kisame to emerge on the opposite bank before taking to the bridge himself.

Centering himself required all his bodily intuition. Itachi breathed consciously and kept his posture fluid, answering each hitch in the bridge's constitution with a congruous distribution of his weight. He did not look down into the depth of the ravine, where the white-crested river rushed along.

Kisame had righted his own hat by the time Itachi arrived on the bank of rocky soil anchoring the opposite end of the bridge.

"We're making good time," he observed, "could stand a break."

His voice was softened by the rain. The forest ahead was dark and grew darker with the shroud of rain, but from the grove of sloping vines and bamboo rose cascading peaks of rock, and Itachi suspected they might find shelter among them.

He nodded.

Under the trees the rain fell sparser, rarefied by the endless leaves and fronds spreading out overhead. Rivulets of water coursed down the shining stems and trunks and seeped into the earth. Pools formed between upwardly thrusting roots. Itachi passed over them easily, focused on an alcove of shadows in the rocks ahead.

A narrow crevice concealed a dim chamber in the cliff. Itachi slid through the opening carefully, his eyes keen and wide in the semidarkness.

The cave was empty. It had not always been: there were bits of human refuse scattered near its mouth, pieces of cloth and bits of rusted metal slowly sinking into the stone.

"Good eye," Kisame struggled through the narrow opening one limb at a time, emerging with his soaked cloak barely clinging to his broad shoulders.

Itachi folded into a crouch.

Kisame sat astride a mound of jutting rock and produced his pack from under his cloak.

"Hungry?" he asked.

"Yeah."

Their choice of rations was far less restricted as mercenaries for Akatsuki, and neither of them took any advantage of it. They remained habituated to the canned and vacuum-sealed nonperishables available at corner stores and, if they were fortunate, the travel kits of the shinobi they dispatched.

"Tuna," Kisame announced, extending an unmarked can to Itachi.

They ate in silence. Rain gathered in the crevices of the stone floor, rising to fill the grooves ground out by years of slow erosion. Itachi peered out into the mellow greyness.

"Oi, Itachi-san, I meant to tell you," Kisame said at length, startling his partner.

"What?" Itachi discarded the empty can on the cave floor.

"Last town we were in, I heard a little news. Gossip, you know."

"And?"

"That kid brother of yours, they say he's thrown in with Orochimaru."

"Ah."

"_Ah_?" Kisame remarked, "That's all? I thought you'd be surprised."

Itachi gave in, again, to contemplation. The news settled into his consciousness in cold, sinking shades, and with every breath, the burden grew heavier. The rain went on. Kisame finished eating without further conversation, and then crossed his arms over his chest as he reclined against the cavern wall.

In the ensuing quiet, Itachi remembered.

* * *

When he received the directive he first supposed it too trivial for ANBU attention, but the decision was not his to make. He was given, for his third mission as a captain, a cell of five veterans to command.

It was considered safest never to decide ahead of time on a meeting location; if an agent was captured en-route, it could compromise his comrades off their guard. They convened outside the village itself, tracking each other's chakra until they converged upon a small barn situated near a farmhouse.

Itachi arrived first. The rest followed in short order, emerging into the dimly lit, sweet-scented warmth of the barn from the cool autumn night. Their masks were drawn over their faces, but Itachi recognized them regardless: the easy, smooth strides were Shiranui Genma's, and the tall, nimble one close behind him was Namiashi Raidou. Next was the conspicuously nondescript Tenzou, still lanky and coltish with the later stages of teen-age. Yamashiro Aoba followed, running his gloved hands over the thick tufts of dark hair that refused to be contained by the rim of his mask. Last, as always, was Hatake Kakashi, slender and lethal.

"I checked the house," Genma said, "the old man is out."

"Out of town?" Tenzou probed.

"Out cold," Genma clarified, "so let's make this quick."

Itachi nodded.

"Easy directive. We're clearing out mercenaries from the mouth of O-Lan bridge. Another unit is relieving us at midnight. We fall back, and relieve them at three. We'll accompany them back at four."

"Well fuck me," Aoba laughed, "weren't there any genin available?"

Itachi shrugged.

"I don't assign the missions. There's going to be an exchange of sensitive documents on the bridge. Those are what we're escorting back."

"Just seems light for us," Aoba mused.

"You're getting paid, so relax," Genma muttered.

"That's all," Itachi said, and destroyed the scroll in a single burst of brilliant flame. The scent of smoke accompanied them as they returned to the night.

A broad yellow moon lent an eerie depth to the shadows of the trees. This was the edge of their world, where the city subsided fully to country, and the highly bureaucratized world of shinobi was replaced by crop cycles, growing seasons, and the vicissitudes of the weather.

O-Lan bridge linked two sides of a broad ravine whose demarcation signaled a political border. It had been for some time the location of hand-offs and hostage exchanges, which had burdened its wizened wooden beams with more interest than an old country bridge was wont to bear.

Forest gave way to field. They moved through a sea of swaying barley and emerged with papery spikelets clinging to their dark-colored canvas pants. Itachi followed the slope of the valley below them until it concluded in a thicket of trees, and he knew the bridge was concealed within.

Something glinted in the dark. Itachi's muscles tensed in unison and he reached out for the pale plate of armor immediately to his right, catching some teammate mid-stride. He heard an exhalation of breath echo in Raidou's mask, and then, before he was consciously aware of its approach, his eyes focused sharply on an airborne shuriken.

He dropped to a crouch to dodge it and then sprang up, propelling himself forward with the momentum of his rebound.

_These must be the mercenaries, _Itachi decided, calm and impassive.

Kakashi fell methodically into combat in the furthest corner of Itachi's field of vision.

And he saw little more. The opponents numbered nine, then five within the first ten minutes of combat. Itachi preferred decapitation; it was certain.

Metal glinted in the moonlight and Itachi kept his eyes wide and alert and predatorily focused on the motions of the enemy shinobi, sliding his sword gracefully out of its sheath and then in again, warm with blood.

ANBU spoke only in hand signals during combat, and thus Itachi's attention was temporarily diverted when a strange, keening wail, only a second or less in duration, erupted from one of his men. He peered through the edge of his mask, and in the perfect memory of his sharingan captured the slippage of a single pale-colored vambrace as it fell beneath its owner's forearm, inviting the penetration of a shuriken thrown in good timing. Blood poured from the wound and the ANBU plucked the shuriken out instantly, tightening his guard and falling back into engagement at once.

Itachi was not immediately perturbed. Equipment malfunctions, rare as they were, did happen, and were known for happening at the least opportune of moments.

By the thirty-minute mark, all nine of the enemy shinobi had been slain or maimed. Itachi rose from the corpse he had been crouching over to survey his cell. There were, at the very least, four standing silhouettes in the swaying field. He approached them with his open palm raised, the designated signal for _mission accomplished._

He drew near enough to hear Genma breathing heavy against his mask like a bull. He jutted a thumb over his shoulder, and then squared his fingers before his midsection, forming the signal for _injury. _

Itachi nodded in recognition and directed them down the hill and toward the bridge. The one who had been injured, he now saw, was Tenzou, unluckiest of them all. The man had fastened the straps of his arm guard extremely tight, and Itachi presumed the pressure would stay the worst of the bleeding.

They descended into the cluster of trees. Even in the blackness of the night, the slim trunks of birches speared upward through the dark in streaks of white, their leaves coolly gold. Itachi gestured to different strategic vantage points among pines and oaks, and his men disappeared into the leaves, blending with the shadows. He himself took up a position on a high sturdy mulberry branch, from which he could observe the length of the bridge and its elimination on the opposite side of the river, as well as the stations of each of the other ANBU.

The tomoe in his sharingan revolved slowly as he focused on Tenzou. The injury did not seem serious, though the other was clearly favoring his arm. Injuries to the forearm, wrist and hand were of particular concern only because they compromised the handling of weapons and the formation of seals by damaging tendons; otherwise, he contemplated, he would not have been half so worried. Itachi suspected that the three-hour break built into the directive had been figured in due to the possibility of injury, given the variability of mercenary shinobi, and was glad of it.

_Only until midnight, _he reminded himself. By the position of the high moon he gathered they would be relieved relatively soon, supposing they had cleared the path well enough for their comrades.

A cool wind shifted the leaves around him. With his senses heightened he heard the resultant shower of pine needles on the soft forest floor, and gazed down into the shadow of the canopy as faint traces of familiar chakra manifested in his consciousness.

Two figures strode into view below. Itachi peered down at them silently, eased by the glint of moonlight on the pale-colored armor. But enemy shinobi had pilfered pieces of armor before, and Itachi therefore waited to see them raise their hands in twin L-shapes, their thumbs resting against their opposite fists.

_Relief._

Itachi dropped to the forest floor, his feet soundless on the carpet of decaying leaves. He waved his men down and they circled slowly around him, nodding in vague recognition to the new ANBU unit.

_Back at three, _Itachi signed, and the captain of the new team nodded resolutely.

ANBU safe houses dotted the countryside. Their locations and physical descriptions were never recorded in any way, nor taught directly to ANBU recruits; instead, operatives learned them on missions with veterans, as Itachi had. A small, wood-paneled chamber concealed among tree roots and underbrush a few miles up the riverbank occurred to him, and he led his men there.

Underneath a network of gnarled ancient roots, the bronze latch of a trap door was barely visible. Itachi crouched beside it and listened, his ear low to the soil, to assure himself that the safe house was empty. Hearing no sound, he thrust the heel of his palm into the latch, and the door swung easily downward, giving way to a series of metal rungs.

He withdrew a pair of slender light sticks from his pack, snapped them to luminescence, and let them fall down the entry shaft. With their pale light guiding the way, he lowered himself in, followed shortly by the others.

The chamber itself was sandy and sparse, consisting of a single room with ailing wood panels fastened along the earthen walls. Empty upturned boxes were scattered and stacked about, seemingly to serve as chairs, or platforms to steady the wounded.

Itachi occupied himself with a map of their area as the others climbed in. Aoba climbed down the ladder last, having secured the door behind them.

Genma swept off his mask, against procedure. The blood drying under his nose looked brackish black in the pale yellowish light, and he brought a gloved hand up to scrape some of it away.

"I don't think it's broken," he said to Raidou. He sat on a box and tipped his head back, letting his forearms rest on his spread knees. Raidou approached and drew close.

"Don't think so either," he agreed. He laid a fingertip against the bridge. "How's that?"

"Not good," Genma replied, "but not broken."

Meanwhile, Kakashi apprehended Tenzou by his wounded arm. Itachi heard but did not see the older shinobi force the younger face-first into the wall, his arm twisted behind him.

"What the fuck were you thinking?"

Tenzou twisted in his grip.

"It's nothing," he muttered.

Kakashi easily unfastened the bands of his arm guard and let it fall to the floor. Blood had already coagulated along the length of the wound, stopping the flow save for a gurgling trickle. Tenzou jerked his arm in an effort to free himself from Kakashi's grip, and the other forced him harder against the wall.

"You've made enough bad decisions for one mission, yeah?" he warned blandly. Tenzou gulped and scowled.

Itachi looked on, impassive. Kakashi had for some time seen to Tenzou's instruction as a member of ANBU; and, unflappable as he tended to be, the Copy-Nin had little patience for mistakes, and none whatsoever for careless ones.

"It was an equipment malfunction," Tenzo grimaced as Kakashi retrieved an alcohol-soaked bandage from his pack and wrapped it tightly about the wound.

"Doubt it."

"The closure was loose."

"Whose fault is that?"

Kakashi wound gauze around the disinfectant pad and tied it off sharply, snapping the knot over his forefinger. Tenzou flexed his hand and drew his arm away, kneeling mutely to scoop his guard off the ground.

"Just came loose," he murmured quietly to himself. He slipped the guard back over his arm and fastened it tightly, then looped a few strips of bandage material over it to insure that it would remain in place.

Itachi watched him. As always, Tenzou seemed subtly haunted, his motions fluid and dreamy, his voice a shade softer, a pitch lower than a shinobi's was wont to be. He wanted to ask if he was all right. He refrained.

Kakashi crouched on the floor and began unloading his weapons. At a given time he carried comparatively little, nothing more than a sword, a tanto, and a few kunai. From his hip pouch he produced a small whetstone, and with methodical precision began to sharpen his blades.

It was not unusual for him to deal so sourly with Tenzou. None of the others were moved by it. Itachi suspected that Kakashi, resolute in his ethics as he seemed, had some amount of unfinished business with the way his father had been treated by the comrades he had risked his life to save. And, while he did not doubt that Kakashi would easily do the same for his teammates, he likewise did not doubt that the man would be tremendously bitter in doing so.

Aoba ate and then slept sitting up, slumped against the wall. Tenzou settled in his own corner to attend to his equipment. Genma and Raidou spoke sparsely and played cards, and Itachi acquainted himself thoroughly with the map of their area, and kept an eye on the passage of time.

And time passed. At length, Itachi rose and scooped the dimming light sticks up, preparing to dispose of them.

"We should start back," he said, and the others rose accordingly, Genma shaking Aoba awake as he passed. Itachi saw each of them up the ladder, rising last himself, and then securing the trap door tangled in the roots behind them. The light sticks disintegrated into ash between his hands, and flowed into the wind.

They returned in stealth. Itachi sought out the unit captain of the other team with the full employment of his sharingan, and motioned to him that they had all arrived without interruption. The other nodded in acknowledgement, and directed their surveillance to the bridge, where a handful of officials from the village waited, still and nervous, for the other nation's envoys.

So much of regular ANBU duty was waiting. Itachi recalled that when he had been appointed captain, the greatest share of praise had been heaped upon his seemingly infinite patience. Without growing weak or anxious or exhausted he could wait for hours, his eyes watching and recording without troubling his smoothly turning mind. Others could not bear the strain of so many empty moments, during any of which terror could strike.

But Itachi could, and did. He fixed himself to a high branch and sought out the forms of his cell, noting that they could afford to be paired rather than spread out individually given the infusion of the second unit.

Kakashi and Tenzou had mounted the same branch. It was thick enough to support them both easily and provided a fine purview of the bridge below, but as Itachi looked on he began to discern that they were not watching the gathering of diplomats.

Through the leaves and their mottled shadows he saw Kakashi, his silver-hair rendering his mask utterly pointless, moving stealthily toward his comrade. His ANBU uniform clung close to his long limbs, and as he stretched his arms out to crawl along the branch he reminded Itachi of something slow and serpentine: precise, persistent, dangerous. Tenzou flattened himself against the branch as if to secure a better view, and like a cloak of shadow, Kakashi moved over him.

He saw Kakashi reach between their bodies momentarily, balancing precariously on his knees and one forearm hooked beneath the other man. When he withdrew his hand, he settled his elbow against the branch for firmer balance, and let his fingers slip into Tenzou's hair.

_Why at a time like this?_

It was difficult for Itachi to discern whether what he was witnessing was a continuation of earlier punishment or an apology for it. Kakashi began to move, shadow pooling and receding in the small of his back as his hips rocked in a slow rhythm. Tenzou slid his own hand under his mask to cover his mouth. His thighs seemed to jerk beneath the other man in an attempt to spread wider, invite more. Kakashi stilled and whispered something to him so low and dark that a passing falcon could not have repeated it. Tenzou relaxed somewhat then, though his fingers and feet flexed with timorous agitation, as though his body were laced with electricity.

_I shouldn't be looking, _Itachi realized. Still he found it nearly impossible to look away. Tenzou's hips had begun to rise slightly in time with Kakashi's thrusts as if to meet him and deepen their coupling. When Itachi felt a painful sensitivity arise in his lower parts, he lay back slowly against the trunk of the tree he had stationed himself in, tilting his face upward.

Through the broad leaves he could see only pieces of the sky. He tried to think of obscurity, of how much in life remained hidden from him: though he had seen interaction like the one currently transpiring between Tenzou and Kakashi, he had yet to feel anything like it, and on some prescient level he suspected he never would. He lay his hand over the hardness in his uniform pants, and within a couple of faint strokes of his gloved palm, felt perilously close to orgasm.

_I can't here, _he thought, but he wanted to. Above him the cold stars peered down, unrevealing. A tight, compelling pressure built in the base of his belly, and with each shift of the wind, his blood grew hotter. He breathed deeply to calm his pulse, but the rising of his chest only urged his clothing against the sensitive tip of his sex in rhythmic strokes. His hips bucked, and he swallowed cold air.

He woke to Kisame shifting in the echoing cave.

Immediately he glanced down into his lap, where his cloak parted over his thighs. Beneath his dark-colored clothes his penis was fully erect, as he had suspected. He slipped his fingers into his pants to position it against his belly, beneath the broad waistband, where it was less conspicuous.

Outside the mouth of the cave, cool rain continued to pour. Itachi swept his hands through his hair and gathered droplets of sweat and rainwater in their passing.

_A walk would help, _he decided. He rose quietly, hoping not to wake his partner. He left his pack and stepped out into the rain, shivering as the cool droplets soaked through his clothes and met with the searing heat of his skin. Instead of numbing his arousal as he had hoped, the sensation merely quickened his pulse and his breathing, imitating the early stages of orgasm. And he did not resist it.

He returned to the edge of the ravine where the rope bridge swing slightly in the midst of the rainstorm, its old fibers soaked and unfurling. He stood at the edge and peered down into the white-tipped current raised by the rain, and after a moment of contemplation laced with the strength of his arousal, slipped his cloak off his shoulders.

_No one would dare take it, _he assured himself, but he felt thrilled, on some level, by the notion of its theft. He hung it on one of the bridge's knotted posts and watched the collar grow heavy and limp.

And then he let himself fall, arms spread, into the river. He met its surface with a profound splash and slipped beneath the rushing blue current. Downward he sank, consumed by the strength of the water, and he gazed upward into the patterns of white foam that spread and faded like networks of shimmering lace above. Leaves passed on the surface, and rafts of pine needles, all of them swept along like he was, by the irresistible force of the water.

Many leagues beneath him was the rocky bottom of the ravine, though it was out of his reach. The slick iridescent bodies of fish wove between his fingers and flickered past his ears, while his breath rose up in streams of bursting pearls.

And, at the top of the ravine, now wide, now narrow again, he could make out through the debris on the water's surface and the foliage overhanging the cliffs nothing of the sky. He spread his arms out and by chance felt his hand brush against a jutting edge of rock, which he captured in his grasp and drew himself toward.

He emerged from the waist up heaving and no less aroused on a rocky bank. His hair cloaked his shoulders, now divested of his shirt and armor, and with his legs still suspended in the rushing river he kicked off his sandals and let them flow downstream.

_Later…I can attend to it later._

If there came any later time. Itachi shuddered as hands as heavy and cold as clay crept up from the smooth riverstones beneath his body and circled his waist, then slid downward slickly to his hips.

This touch he remembered. He lay his cheek down against the stones and glanced over his shoulder. And there, positioned over him, was Shisui, shrouding him from the falling rain. There was seaweed tangled in his hair, and his skin seemed half-translucent and veined like marble, twice as cold. But it was Shisui, long submerged in the waters of memory, now recovered.

"I'm close," Itachi breathed into the sonorous roar of the river. Shisui seemed not to hear. He slid the other's pants off easily, aided by the current, and Itachi cried out when the water swirled persistently around his sex. Shisui's grip tightened, and his fingers traced over the curve of the boy's hip down to the cleft of his body, where the meeting of his thighs gave way to his entrance.

A long, cold finger pressed insistently inside him, and Itachi registered that the knuckles were just the same as they had been last, thicker than the finger itself, knobby with teen-age. Each time another of the joints pressed inside it felt like being entered anew, and Itachi reacted to each burst of sensation, spreading his thighs as best he could against the onslaught of the river.

Itachi held the protruding rock of the bank with both arms, and felt a surge of relief as Shisui withdrew his searching fingers and drew closer, positioning the head of his sex in place. With slow, careful consideration – the sort of concern that the innocent identified with _love _– Shisui penetrated him, pressing in until the full length of his penis was sheathed inside his younger cousin.

Nothing further was needed. Shisui's lips met the back of Itachi's neck, and Itachi's body spasmed sharply, his muscles relaxing and contracting in a quick, maddening rhythm as his orgasm overpowered him entirely. When his mouth opened so that he could cry out that _yes, this was what he wanted_, he was silenced by a flood of water flushing past his lips and into his throat.

* * *

He woke to Kisame shifting in the echoing cave.

"Huh?" the other grumbled, rolling his shoulders.

Itachi said nothing. The rain had receded, leaving the forest endlessly green and steaming in its wake.

"Well," Kisame yawned, rising, "we should head back out, then."

"Aa."

Itachi stood. His semen cooled against the cloth of his pants, but his cloak concealed him entirely, and he did not worry that his partner would notice.

They set out. The earth was lush and gave easily underfoot. Birds had again begun to sing, and strange insects cried out in the underbrush.

"I'm still pretty surprised about that kid brother of yours," Kisame remarked.

Itachi gazed up into the thick canopy of leaves overhead.

"I'm not," he said. And, after a moment, added: "it's like the weak to reach out for the strong when they're suffering."

"Ha!" Kisame grinned, "And I thought you didn't think too much of Orochimaru."

"I don't," Itachi clarified. "He's weak. But Sasuke is weaker, and too young to judge power when he sees it."

"Even with those eyes of yours?"

"It takes experience to know the breadth of the sky from a view through the trees," Itachi answered, and that was his final thought on the matter.

Kisame seemed pleased.

"Well then," he said, "that sounds true to me."

* * *

**Thanks for the read! Please review.  
**


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